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 enlarge | Author: Tommy Angelo
Publisher: Tommy Angelo
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $26.95
You Save: $3.00 (10%)
New (6) Used (3) from $26.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  19 reviews
Sales Rank: 12727
Media: Paperback
Pages: 266
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1419680897
Dewey Decimal Number: 795
EAN: 9781419680892
ASIN: 1419680897
Publication Date: December 13, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 How many times can you reread a book? March 20, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
I've been over the text of Elements of Poker at least a dozen times, and I enjoyed it every time.
I had a head start -- I served Tommy as his lead editor. I count contributing to this book as one of my proudest accomplishments. Tommy is a great writer. He brings fresh perspectives, a sense of humor, and years of conscious experience to writing about poker. He also brings genuine concern for his readers. His desire to spare his readers pain shows on every page.
Elements of Poker is particularly strong in helping poker players win the emotional game of poker. Topics like tilt and quitting immediately improve results. Much of the book applies very profitably to life as well as poker. And it's all written entertainingly.
I find quotes from Elements of Poker returning to my mind, and I'm glad they do. It's my very good fortune to have Tommy's words as familiar as nursery rhymes to me now.
My review from Card Player magazine February 21, 2008
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This review was published in Card Player magazine on February 21, 2008:
To discover what we really need in a new poker book, let's first examine what we really don't need. A list of starting hands. A reminder that "tight is right." How to play a flush draw in limit. I could go on.
So what do we need? We need Tommy Angelo's excellent new book that covers 144 "elements" of poker (the title, no doubt, harks to The Elements of Style by Strunk and White). We need to develop our own selection of starting hands, by position; he provides a chart. We need to learn to play "mum poker," which "is not about not talking. It's about not talking about certain things, namely, poker things." We need to learn about "the path of leak resistance" (say, avoiding the pits: "When a poker player plugs the leak, or tries to, he walks the path of leak resistance"). We even need to learn how to fold: not what to fold, but how to fold: you "fastfold" when "you muck your hand as soon as you know you are beat" because (a) it's courteous and (b) it reduces your information outflow.
"Fastfold" is one of the many words and terms Angelo has coined (and his great verbal dexterity makes the book a pleasure to read; lively, entertaining, and interesting as well as instructive). He credits himself with the creation of the word "hijack" for the seat one to the right of the cutoff (because a raised from that seat "hijacked" Angelo from the button). Another one I particularly relished was "bliscipline," a combination of bliss and discipline: "when you are at the table and you are so totally in control of yourself and so totally at peace in the situation that no matter what happens next, you'll still have plenty of resolve in reserve."
"Bliscipline" is what you need to survive and win at poker; bliscipline is what you need to achieve--another Angelo-ism--"tiltlessness." While I still believe the definite work on tilt is Zen the Art of Poker by Larry Phillips (see my review in Card Player, April 25, 2007), Angelo is the new poet of tilt, which he defines as "any deviation from your A-game and your A-mindset, however slight or fleeting." Everybody tilts; "To make money from tilt, you don't need to be tiltless. But you do have to tilt less."
Tilt less; win more. How? "To win at poker, you have to be very good at losing." And that requires practice. Learn to become "hopeless" ("if I am hopeful that I will win, it is inevitable that I will sometimes be disappointed"). Recognize that poker is the "mother fluctuater" (which is "why it's best to not give a fluc"). Understand that the "gray area"--that huge swath of poker where you simply don't know what to do--is just another part of the game. Do not "resist reality": "Extreme resistance is extreme pain."
And we need to learn how to breathe (i.e., mindfully: "to elevate your calmness"). It sounds like New Age claptrap, but Angelo has made me a believer in the power of controlled, conscious breathing, which helps you step away from bad beats and losses: "By eliminating the past, and eliminating the future, we give ourselves this present." Very Zen, but, I think, very true--and very helpful (if you put it to work).
Elements of Poker does offer some traditional strategic on limit, no-limit, and tournament poker. Angelo is eloquently persuasive, for example, about the supreme importance of position, and there's a good section on the "dollar value" of your stack/position in tournament poker. But read this book for its understanding of the more subtle "elements of poker." Then read it again.
How to live and play and keep your sanity February 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is not one of strategy as the author makes fairly clear. It covers almost everything else that has to do with playing though, and most importantly it covers tilt and to tilt less. I have already taken the advice and applied it to my own game. It has helped me play my best more often. It has been for it self several times over.
A book that keeps on giving January 13, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
I have just finished reading Tommy Angelo's "Elements of Poker". This is a book I will re-read, and re-re-read, on a monthly basis. It contains everything I need.
the universality of Reciprocality January 12, 2008
...and i thought i would be compost before I ever used that word.
I don't play poker & don't aspire. On the other hand, during a year of crisis and AFGO's ( another f*cking growth opportunity), I have had the author on tap cause he's my brother and doesn't find me heavy.
It is a delight that he has not just the skills and insights with which to navigate the real world of poker and the metaphoric universe it embodies, but the verbal chops and inclination to share as well.
I still don't like the fundamental relationship set up between any two human beings in the game of poker. That takes nothing away from what Tom has to offer anyone who ever wanted to start identifying their biggest obstacle as something invisible that lives between their ears.
I read the last chapter first cause that's what i do. Tom then advised me to go back and start at page 225 and go from there. That's what anyone could do.
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